Do people still read blogs?

I don't really want to do do the math to see how much I've spent on this website over the years that I've had it up and not really done anything with it. When I first registered the domain I had ideas on what I wanted to do with it but never really had the time or motivation to really finish any of the websites I started or bought the domains for over the years. I've been tempted more than a few times to just let this go, too. Delete the blogs and let at least the .net domain go. When I started writing on the internet a long time ago, blogs were interesting to me but I never fully committed to doing it and they've LONG since lost popularity to numerious other social media platforms that had their "15 minutes" and then ultimately fell out of favor. I never really got into most of the social media sites post MySpace and livejournal. I don't have Twitter/X, TikTok, etc and don't care to. I've started typing posts numerous times here since the last time I've actually posted something but I get sidetracked and when I come back to it I realize that it doesn't matter, nobody is going to read it and once I've typed part of it out I stopped caring about it. So, I delete the partial post and forget about this blog for months, years... and then do it again.

I have themes that I keep coming back to. They're the tags that are on the posts here. I get in cyclic moods where I want to sell and donate all my stuff and just go somewhere else. I want to live in a tiny house in the woods. I want to get in better shape and ride my bike more. I want to read more. Do more artistic things. Spend more time with my family and friends. Go see some live bands. Get another project car and spend time working on it. One thing that's rarely on my list is post on my blog, build a new website or app or do anything with technology.

I get wrapped up in the day-to-day. Work, chores, errands and the little time I feel like I have I'm vegged out in front of the TV with some dumb YouTube video playing. Then I cycle again, start to type another post about how I'm not motivated to do anything, never finish it and then delete it.

I'm actually going to click the publish button on this one.

Writing online when nobody is reading

On all of the various websites I have had (starting with free Geocities and Angelfire hosted sites in the late 1990's/early 2000's and continuing through this site) I have done very little promotion of my internet presence. I have told a few friends and family members about some specific things over the years, but almost all of the things I've written or put online (including this site) were always just meant to be a creative and technical outlet for myself.

Before the widespread use of the internet to post every minute of every day from your smartphone, I (probably like many others around my age) had notebooks of doodles and stuff I wrote that nobody had ever seen. I had physical photographs of myself with people I'd met and places I'd been. It was amazing to be able to put some of the stuff out somewhere (somewhat anonymously) to share with people that I didn't know in real life and didn't feel like were judging me. When I put things up back then I always assumed that nobody was looking at it (and nobody really cared) but still posted somewhat cautiously because anyone could be looking at it.

There was a brief time in the early 2000's where I was a member of an online community that had journals. Through that site I met a ton of really cool people. People that I didn't know IRL, before I got to know them online. People would come around to your journal on the site and ask for updates and share stories and recommendations for things (movies, music, what to do after a breakup, how to cope with a shitty job). They'd come around just to say they missed you and ask how life was. I'd regularly make posts with boring little life updates. When I had nothing to write about I'd ask people to share random things with me and people really did. I'd spend hours reading what my friends has posted and commenting back to them individually. Towards the end of that time period I was busy with work and real life relationships (spending less time online) and short on cash (paying back student loans) and I stopped paying to be a member and very quickly lost touch with everyone there. For a short time after leaving, I tried to keep in touch with people by email and later I tried to keep that online community feeling going briefly with free options like LiveJournal, Friendster and MySpace (remember them?) but they never really went anywhere and I struggled with posting anything regularly enough to keep people interested in coming back on those other platforms.

During the early part of those years, though, I remember chatting in various chat rooms and ICQ (and later, AIM) with people from all around the US and Canada, all hours of the day and night. People I met online who were interested in stuff I'd written or profiles I had on websites that just randomly reached out for whatever reason and we started talking. It felt less weird back then to just randomly say "Hello. I really like your [picture]/[poem]/[story]/[profile]/[whatever]." or "I also like [author]/[band]." and then end up talking online sharing stories, pictures, trials and tribulations, relationship and family drama. Pretty much anything you'd end up talking to a good friend about.

People were a little worried about online stalkers and weirdos, but many of the platforms today are tied a little too closely to the real world to feel safe about posting a lot of things or just randomly commenting to strangers. (Not even going to get on the topic of trolls.) Back then, if you wanted to avoid people you just made a different ICQ/AIM name and shared it with a smaller group. I didn't post my phone number, address, where I went to school, hometown, who my real life friends and family were, what I ate for breakfast and where I ate it... and that was the norm. I picked funny city names to live in for profiles like Eek, AK or Boring, OR (real places) but told online friends where (roughly geographically) and eventually real city/state when I had talked to them for a little while. A few even knew my full name and address (as we mailed physical gifts, mix CDs and stuff to each other) but I think what made it fun for all of us was the ability to connect with people easily based on genuine interests instead of primarily based on physical location.

I bring my personal internet history up, because lately I've been thinking about how the internet has changed over my two decades of using (or not using) evolving technologies and platforms. I'm sure a lot of it is just me growing up and out of my teen (and twenties) angst and drama. It's been quite some time since I've ranted about a bad breakup or raved about traveling hours to see my favorite band(s). It's been even longer since I posted an extremely cryptic one line post and had multiple people I've never met in real life who knew instantly what I was talking about (and laughing with me or being supportive, whatever was appropriate). I rarely write about politics or religion due to the fear of offending someone I have to sit near at work on a daily basis. The remainder for me is the fact that online is much more like (and intertwined with) real life now. If I wouldn't talk about it with someone I don't know that well at work, I don't post it on Facebook. I don't like liking things because they're just using the information I give them to sell advertisements. The different groups of people that are friends on these platforms don't overlap on many/most interests and I don't care enough (or have the time) to break them into groups to post to different groups, anyway.

Most of my online friends now are people I actually knew IRL before connecting with them online. Facebook (and Instagram) are shared with family, friends, coworkers, classmates and the occasional person you didn't really know all that well in college/high school/middle school and even probably even some parents of your friends and acquaintances.

There's obviously nothing wrong with any of this, but these days my feeds are primarily posts about real life friend's families and pictures of their children, lots of doom and gloom about politics, and so many pictures of food. Some of it is interesting, some of it is infuriating and some of it is just shares to scroll past, but it just doesn't feel like it used to. It feels like a curated glance into the good parts of someone else's life and things that they want you to be [happy]/[sad]/[angry] at with them. It's nice to have a convenient way to keep up with people's lives but I feel like there's little to no actual interaction short of clicking the thumbs-up (or now long press for the heart, etc...) and typing a quick "Congratulations." post on major life events.

I feel more disconnected even though I know more about what's going on in friend's lives now compared to when I actually saw a lot of them every day in school, work, etc.

The lazy days of summer...

Note: This post is going to be a quick recap of my summer. Repeat, this is just a gratuitous catch up post. There is nothing really deep here. I hope to revive my interest in this blog and trying to come up with more thoughtful ideas for it in the not too distant future, but until then, this will have to do. ;)

It always seems that even though I love the summer, I end up being pretty lazy for the majority of it. I end up sitting in the air conditioned splendor of my apartment and not wanting to do much of anything once I get home from work.

Even though it seems like most of my summer was spent sitting on my comfortable couch, with my girlfriend and our laptops, TV shows and books -- we did manage to do some fun stuff.

We went to the Seattle area for a week in the beginning of July to visit my girlfriend's brother, his wife and their son. We had a blast which involved a decent amount of fireworks, drinking, shopping, eating and attempting to stay cool. For a place that has the reputation of being drenched in an almost constant rain, it barely sprinkled only the last morning we were there. It was hot, humid and sunny the entire rest of the week. I learned that if a toddler says "I have idea." to make sure to hold onto the fireplace lighter that you've been using to light fireworks because it will be snatched out of your back pocket. Also, if said toddler comes down from upstairs with his hands behind his back, that there's probably something that he shouldn't have in those hands.

I also turned 30 at the end of July! It was nice and low-key, just like I wanted. My girlfriend cooked me a nice dinner on my actual birthday, her mother took me out to dinner at Brown's on the day after and my family had a BBQ on the day after that. So it was three nice days of birthday celebration, but nothing too crazy.

I purchased an Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook as an early birthday present for myself and to bring on our trip to WA. It was nice to be able to check mail, pay bills, look for things to do, check plane schedules at the airport, and more all in a tiny, portable little package. I think it was well worth the money I spent on it, even though the battery life (with the 3-cell battery) isn't great and I tend to use my Dell Vostro as my main computer when I'm in the apartment. The display seems bigger and usable than the 8.9" size suggests and it's been trouble free, so far!

I also read some decent books. I picked up a couple books by Christopher Buckley, No Way to Treat a First Lady and Little Green Men: A Novel after reading Boomsday last year. I recommend all three. They were all well written, funny and sarcastic. I also read Steve Wozniak's book iWoz, along with How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World): And What You Can Do about It by Bill Quinn and Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. I'm not sure if I'd recommend any of them to people unless they're interested in Apple and/or personal computer history, retailing or marketing and advertising, respectively... ;)

Last weekend we went to The Clark to see the Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence exhibit. There were a lot of interesting oil paintings, watercolors, pastels and collages there (between Dove and O'Keeffe) with one of the most humorous pairings being Arthur Dove's watercolor Happy Clam Shell next to Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel Slightly Open Clam Shell. The pictures linked above are from this review of the show by Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Arts Journal website. There is also another review for Wall Street Journal by the same author that was interesting.

I also spent some time last weekend doing maintenance on my car that I've been neglecting for a little while. I washed and waxed it and my brother and I put on Akebono ProACT ceramic brake pads, Centric rotors, McGard SplineDrive lug nuts, NGK Iridium spark plugs and NGK plug wires. Next it's getting new Bridgestone Potenza G019 Grid tires as soon as they are shipped to Firestone. (The size I need is on backorder.) The brakes are feeling good so far, the lug nuts are much higher quality than the ones they replaced and I seem to be getting a few more MPG with the fresh spark plugs and the reset computer. (Side notes: I didn't like the BF Goodrich Super Sport A/S tires that I put on last spring/early summer. They wore out extremely quickly and weren't worth the money that I paid for them. I also didn't have good luck with Gorilla spline drive style lug nuts. They only lasted one winter before the chrome was peeling off.)

I also decided to finally kill my MySpace account. I found that I hardly ever logged on and I decided not to keep it around for no reason...

There was some other fun stuff sprinkled in there but those were the big highlights... all in all it was a good summer.

Bands with ONLY MySpace sites

People in bands (especially unsigned ones that only have MySpace pages and no website of their own) please listen.

MySpace pages shouldn't be the only source of information for your fans on the internet. I realize that you probably get tons of people that look at your page there, add you as a friend and listen to the songs that you're sharing there and it's free! That's all good but there are many employers (including mine) that block MySpace. On top of that, there are tons of people that don't like MySpace and try to avoid it as much as possible. (I tend to fall into this category, as well.)

Put up a website of your own. They're really not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. It'll cost you less than $20 for a domain name for a year and $5-10 a month for basic hosting to get you started. Divide it up among all of the band members and it'll probably cost you less than $20-25 each for the year! The hardest part of the whole process is going to be finding a domain name that isn't already taken. I'm sure you have a friend or a band member that can put up a good looking website. It's pretty easy these days.

Keep your MySpace up but also link to your own site and keep the information there up to date so it looks like you're interested in keeping your fans who can't get to (or don't want to go to) your MySpace page informed on where you are touring and what you're doing.

There are some bands out there that I'd like to link to and share with my friends... but I won't link to MySpace. I dislike it that much. This might be just a pet peeve of mine but I can't be the only one who feels this way.

I think this might be strike 3, MySpace...

I just saw this headline: "MySpace Will Use Member Info to Tailor Ads".

I understand they need to make money to survive. I understand that in order to make money they need to sell ad space... but to tell the truth I think I was just waiting for a third strike to be pissed off about MySpace for so that I would feel less bad about deleting my profile there. This latest "revelation" isn't even that big of a deal (most businesses use their customer's data to put products in front of people who are more likely to buy them) but I don't really have an excuse to keep my profile up on MySpace but for some reason I feel compelled to keep it there.

I've already gone over the fact that I hate the horrible layouts that many people have, I seriously dislike the attempt to block spam using "msplinks" and I'm not a huge fan of their "beta tracking software" for parents.

On top of those things, I don't use MySpace ever. I can't get to it from work so I only pop on at home for a minute here and there at home to delete the friend requests I get from bands I don't like and random non-existent girls with the same exact profiles but with different names and pictures. I couldn't be less interested in collecting slutty, fake girlbot trophy pictures as "friends".

The last time I actually used MySpace for anything it was to send a message to my brother. I didn't need to use MySpace, though, I could have also emailed him, called him or stopped over to his place to tell him. I have already taken down my one link in my profile (to my blog) in protest over "msplinks". So I guess there's really nothing left there aside from a list of things I like and a collection of friends that I know and/or have known in real life...

Is there any reason I should stay on myspace?

P.S. Google, you kind of suck, too... but I like Google search, Gmail and Blogger... so you'll escape my wrath this time. ;)

Strike two, myspace...

It seems that myspace is beginning a beta test of tracking software intended for parents to track what their kids are doing on myspace.

I'm going to lay out a few very rough ideas on why this isn't a very good idea which won't solve all that much. It's ridiculous to me that people would hand over permission for a huge corporation like News Corp. to have anything to do with tracking what they and even more worrisome, their kids, do online.

1) How many kids use their friend's computers? I know that when I was a kid most of the bad things I did were not at home where I knew my parents could catch me. Probably about 99% of the things I did that I shouldn't have done (including playing with firecrackers, lighting stuff on fire, smoking for the first time) were done while I was at friend's houses. What's stopping kids from just getting on myspace at their friend's house? Parents are better off telling their kids why they shouldn't do things than to just not say anything and then try to catch them doing something wrong. I can pretty much guarantee that they're doing a whole lot more than you can possibly even hope to catch. (Especially when it's computer-related. Many kids can outsmart their parents when it comes to anything on a computer.)

2) How do we know this program is not secretly tracking everything we do on our computers and reporting back to myspace's parent corporation News Corp.?

It has been reported that News Corp. was mainly interested in myspace to get information from its users in order to get better targeted ads in front of the primarily young audience that uses myspace but fast forwards commercials on their DVRs. See this quote from the article linked above:

"And most importantly, Myspace has detailed logs of its users' preferences, online behaviour and personal information.

That could help the company tailor what it does to the ever-more-discerning market which Mr Murdoch believes he has identified."

Now think about adding additional tracking information on top of all of the information that was already willingly given to them by myspace's users... scary!

3) When did we outsource the responsibilities of parenting? When did it become News Corp/myspace's responsibility to keep tabs on what your kids are doing online? What happened to sitting in the same room with your child on the computer and occasionally walking past? What happened to limiting time on the computer? What happened to telling your kids not to talk to strangers?

It's NOT ANYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY BUT THE PARENTS OF THE CHILDREN to keep track of what they're doing. People say "myspace is just giving them a tool to help" but when was the last time you gave that kind of power to someone who is trying to make money off of you?

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I'm sure I could go on and on with reasons that this isn't the best idea I've ever heard... but I'm sure that people will still download it in an attempt to divert more blame and responsibility of parenting off onto entities that they can sue when something goes wrong...

Myspace... this is strike 2. I know you won't miss me as a user but I can only hope that I'm not the only one who doesn't agree with the direction you've taken.

I found another reason to HATE myspace.

I went to update the link to my blog from myspace and I found that when I saved my change and went to test my new link, I hovered the mouse over the link "http://www.msplinks.com/[random-string]=" showed up as the link. I went back and changed it again... same result. I do a little research and turn this up:

More MySpace Censorship (and how to get around it!) (Don't bother with their "solution", though, it's stupid and the "msplinks" are still going to be there. You just link to another site and then redirect, adding more complexity to a formerly SIMPLE process.)

There are a few more links out there about the same subject but apparently this started a couple months ago to "stop the spammers" but from some of the comments and stuff about the msplinks, it sounds like they've been blocking legitimate sites. (It sounds to me like someone has their panties in a bunch because other people are making money off of their precious site. I know you're not listening, myspace, but FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU MYSPACE!)

I'm *this close* to deleting my myspace profile. I never check it unless someone sends me a message there or I have to update something (as was the case tonight.) I can't get to it from work because it's blocked and as I've complained about before, most of the people I know aren't on myspace and many of the profiles there assault my eyes. All I know is that I'm becoming less and less of a fan of myspace. (Which is hard to do because I started out not liking it.) Maybe it's time to go back to friendster. (Just kidding.) In all likelihood, I'm probably done with online "social networks" all together.

eBay progress

Out of the few accumulated laptop parts that I put up on eBay last night, two sold already. I'm up to $60 - shipping costs (about $10-15). That's not a bad start for two items. I think for the stickers I'm going to break them up into lots of 10 stickers and sell them for maybe $5 per lot.

I'm not sure how that will work out but I guess we shall soon see. I'm going to have some more stuff going up there in the next few days. I'm hoping to get at least a few hundred dollars worth of my accumulated junk (car parts, bike parts, CDs I'll never listen to, books, DVD's I've watched once, a random video game that someone found, etc.) up there.

I know that I keep saying this but I'm actually doing it for a change.

I guess this makes for boring blogging, though. Sorry about that. Hopefully there will be more interesting news soon.

Oh, I've been messing around on Facebook lately. One of my friends who knows how much I dislike myspace said I might like it better. I'm not sure yet. I must say one of the negatives that I've found about Facebook so far is the fact that even less of the people I know are on Facebook than are on myspace and there aren't that many people I know on myspace. I guess social networking sites are better for people with... well... social networks.

I do like the simplicity of the layouts, though. There is no blaring shit music, animated graphics and HORRIBLE backgrounds that kill me on myspace. That's a BIG plus! If I can get more of my friends on it I might like it more.

"10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job"

I stumbled upon this old blog entry entitled "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job"and I had to throw it in here. I haven't had a chance to absorb a lot of it yet... but I thought the basic points that this Steve Pavlina fellow made were both funny and pretty well thought out.

More later, perhaps.

Hungry and tired.

The title pretty much states how I'm feeling today. I'm hungry and tired. I slept like a rock last night but I just wanted to keep sleeping when the alarm went off at 6:30 AM. Now I'm at work and I really don't feel like being here today.

Today is the start of me trying to eat more healthy, exercise regularly and just generally work toward being more healthy. I started out today by drinking water instead of coffee, Vitamin Water or Snapple green or white tea drinks. I've already cut WAY back on the amount of soda I drink and I can't stand the taste of diet drinks so that leaves the above drinks or juices on my list of safe drinks.

One thing that I've noticed about myself and drinking water is that my mouth feels much more dry after drinking water than it does a sweetened soft drink. I tried googling to see if anyone had that same particular feeling or if I was just being stupid... and I didn't find anything besides websites saying to drink more water.

I did, however, come across a website called 43 Things that (as the name would suggest) lets you put in 43 things that you want to do into a list and it can automatically email you reminders and stuff like that. Plus it looks like you can share ideas with people who have the same goals and basically try to help each other out. I only started playing with it a few minutes ago... but it seems like a good place to put a to do kind of list up. I started with a few generic ones like "lose weight", "pay off my debt" and "buy a house" but I'm sure once I get some time to mess around with it I can come up with some more inspired goals.

I've also been reading my friend Sam's blog about cycling and it has been kind of getting me itching to go out and ride my bike again. I need to get my bike out and cleaned up and maybe go for a quick spin if it's nice out this weekend. I wish I still had friends who rode bikes.

[2024-02-13: Removed dead link to 43things.]

More "old friends".

Let me first start by saying that I HATE the fact that the company I work for blocks myspace. Now I'm not usually a big myspace fan. In fact, I've said on numerous occasions that myspace rolls into one domain EVERYTHING that is wrong with the internet.

Justification: There is too much useless information, too many horrible layouts and half-assed attempts at color schemes. If your awesome background picture contains more than a couple colors and those colors aren't close enough shades to each other that you can pick a color that stands out over it, it's practically impossible to read your text without highlighting it. There are sounds and videos and pictures tucked into random places and overflowing off to the sides so I have to scroll side to side to see everything on my 12" iBook. (Aside: If I wanted to watch a music video I'd go find it and watch it. I don't need to see them on your myspace page. If you really need to share a video send a message/bulletin with a link or post a blog about it.)

Anyway, now that my requisite "myspace rant" is out of the way: I just got a myspace friend request from someone who I haven't seen or heard from in a couple years... and I can't get to it. I have to wait until 5:30 when I get home to check, approve and send a message to this person...

Have I mentioned that I don't have that much patience these days?

It makes you think...

(First a little background for those who might possibly be reading this who don't know me: I currently work in Bakery Merchandising for a 115 store supermarket chain.)

Every once in awhile I overhear something that makes me chuckle a little and then I sit back and start to think. Today it was our new secretary who said to another coworker: "Why do they call it patent flour? I thought flour was flour."

At first I just gave a snarky little chuckle at the person's expense and then I started to think. I wonder how it is I wound up where I am in life and why I know what I know. There was definately a point in time where I did think "flour was flour" and it didn't really matter that there are a ridiculous amount of types of flours out there. If I wanted to make a cake, I used a cake mix. If I wanted cookies, I just went to the store and bought Freihofer's Chocolate Chip Cookies. Furthermore, bread was bread. The only choices I knew about were white and wheat... and then it hit me. I remember asking that same basic question I laughed at in the last paragraph about 4 years ago when I was working in one of the bakeries that I now help oversee...

Now I don't know if I'm making sense, I'm know I'm kind of rambling... but the part that made me think is how did I start to learn about all of this and why? Deep down I don't really care about flour. (I'm sure someone out there does... but that person is not me.) I don't care about baked goods. Don't get me wrong, I love to eat cookies and different kinds of breads... but why did I spend the past few (5+, actually) years learning about and working with baked goods? I never expected that this would be what I'm doing for a living...

I used to think of myself as a geek. I knew all about what the "fastest" and "best" computers were. (Now my advice is just to buy something cheap that meets your basic needs because no matter what you buy and how much you spend it's going to be obsolete in a couple years. I don't know anyone who really NEEDS multiple processors and GIGABYTES of RAM to check their email, add friends to their MySpace friend list and watch funny videos on YouTube... but that's a topic for another blog.) I used to sit for hours in front of a monitor and type code and end up with a little program that does something silly or a web page full of information that my friends looked at to keep track of what I was up to and what sites I was looking at on the internet. I used to spend my free time working on and riding mountain bikes. I used to work on my cars...

When did I start to care about flour? When was it that I started to snicker at office drones who don't know the difference between patent and hi-gluten flour? When did I start to feel like our technology driven culture was becoming more oriented toward the "use for a year, throw away and upgrade" model? Why did this one quote that made me chuckle make me think about all of this? When was it that I became so cynical?

I don't know the answers to all of these questions... but I do know that I love to learn new things. I tend to throw myself into whatever has captured my attention and learn as much as I can about that particular topic until the next thing that grabs my interest comes along. Lately I've been thinking about tons of different things like: painting, green building, eco-friendly industries, green power sources, how to better use online social networks for the good of society instead of as a popularity contest, RFID technology and using the internet as a more coherent means of distributing information.

Eventually I hope to elaborate on most of the above topics in their own blog posts... but for now that's what I started to think about after I got a cynical chuckle at a coworker's expense.